The Bad News Is That Reality Doesn't Exist
by Tallulah Grammar Songstress
Summary: Doug Rattmann feels uneasy at Bring Your Daughter to Work Day. Then things get worse. Collection of ficlets of the events leading up to the first game.
1. Chapter 1

(A/N: The title and a few of GlaDOS's lines are taken directly from the game/the Lab Rat comic. Also, I suspect not all of what's here matches up entirely with canon, but trying to understand Portal backstory completely makes my head hurt... Originally written for the 12daysChristmas community on LiveJournal, prompt "ten great escapes".)

Maybe it's because there's so many more people than usual. Bring Your Daughter To Work Day is in full swing, kids and banners everywhere, and the meds have been working fine but perhaps the change of routine - _additional variables_, the geeky science part of his mind suggests - are making him twitchy. Whatever. There aren't any voices, there aren't any _thoughts_, but he feels... on edge, like he's waiting for a storm.

He's drinking coffee and watching people and the edginess isn't going away.

"C'mon, try and mingle a bit," Henry is saying to him. "Not long now til the big switch-on."

A smile. That's not good, the feeling that someone else is doing the smiling, the acting-like-a-normal-human bit. That is a bad sign. He's fighting the urge to clutch the bottle of pills in his inside jacket pocket. _God, getting paranoid about the paranoia is a whole other level of ridiculous._

He says, "You're sure it's a good idea? It's been a bit of a rocky road getting it to co-operate, you have to admit."

Henry shakes his head, a pitying smile on his face. "You've got to take risks if you want to push the frontiers of science, remember." The smile. The smile is not good, it is the _why are you being so strange? What's wrong with you? _smile. Geez, this... it has to be a bad day. Just a bad day. But he's not missed a dose, and... it's not the people, the people are fine (whereas before it would be that they were all thinking about him, watching him) and there aren't any voices or any faces or movements that vanish when he looks at them. It just -

The mass of wires and machinery hanging from the ceiling, watching them. Not just him. All of them.

"Stop looking so gloomy," Henry is saying. "Nothing is going to go wrong."

ooo

Normality. It was a declaration to himself. Standing in the sunlight outside a pharmacy with a paper bag of pills in his hand, a diagnosis decanted into small square plastic bottles. _Okay. You are... No, okay, you have a mental condition. That's __**good**__. That __**explains**__ things. _Always, before, those memories of bad times. Of times when everything became cruel and frightening and no one else could see it. It turns out they weren't anything. They weren't real.

Take responsibility, be functional, and this does not have to be anything big. And so he had. _Managing his condition._ And stopping, catching himself, saying _no one else is seeing this. This is just you. This is just you and you need to ignore it._

He's telling himself that right now and he's swearing he's going to get a grip, he's going to stay here and smile and say the right things and make small talk because _nothing is wrong_. He's swearing all that but... it's just words. Panic in his chest and a long scream like a scrawled line under the _normal_ thoughts: **this isn't safe. Get out. ****_Get out._**

And he gives in. Coffee cup rattling as he lets it go onto the nearest surface, and he's turning, hurrying through people, trying not to shove them, hating himself for being such a goddamn lunatic, _for god's sake, nothing's wrong, get a grip, why are you giving in to it?_ Smile. Mutter something about _needing to get some air_. This really isn't good and he had better not make a habit of it, if the paranoia's kicking in even with the pills then he's going right back to the doctor, he's going to keep this under control -

Normal thoughts. Normal worries.

They stop mattering approximately two minutes after he's left the main chamber. He is standing in the corridor resting his forehead against the glass, staring down at the emptiness below and the lights of the rest of the facility in the distance and trying to kid himself he's just suffering the after-effects of a stuffy room when he hears the doors slam shut, and a few moments later the screaming starts.

ooo

Normality falling away like a stage set being dismantled.

On the other side of the glass someone is writhing and clawing at it - a guy in Marketing - hands twitching and spasming, blood running like tears from his eyes and nose.

Red spots on the glass. He is staring at it and then all at once he's running, dashing down the corridor, almost tripping over his own feet. You never run in the corridors. There's too much risk of crashing into someone holding something that might explode. (Still no voices, but he isn't listening for them right now. Still operating on the overriding command that _you have to get out_.)

Back in the main corridors now, charging past closed doors. Everyone's at the switch-on. Everyone is - _oh, god, they - __**everyone**__ -_

(Still no _this can't be happening._)

He's thinking, _neurotoxin_. He's thinking, _it'll pipe it through the rest of the facility next_. He's thinking, _crawl spaces - between the walls -_ He'd noticed stuff like that, bolt-holes, because sometimes when he'd still believed everyone was out to get him he'd been sorely tempted to climb into one. In the distance, more doors slamming. _It's sealing us in. Oh, god. _Fumbling with a creaking handle. The door glancing off the wall. Jumping onto the nearby desk, kicking someone's keyboard out of the way, wrenching at the heating vent. An older system, separate from the newly-installed neurotoxin emitters, falling apart, it was never truly warm anywhere. Rust under his nails. And then up and into the darkness and the clang and clatter as he scrambles along, and the sound of his own shaky, terrified breathing.

Then the shock hits and he's trembling so hard he has to stop moving. What the hell is he - no, what the hell just - they were positive, they all swore blind it was safe now. There must have - failsafes. No, they'd decided those weren't necessary, _the morality core will be enough, save the processing power_, they'd - _everybody_had been in the main chamber. Surely it couldn't be - surely he couldn't be the only survivor. Why the hell - why him, he wasn't anything special, other people should have figured it out too -

_So, what, you'd prefer it to be a really bad breakdown? You've just completely lost it and now you're hiding in the vents for no reason?_ He tests the idea out, prods it. _See this isn't real. See that everyone else is fine. _No takers. Even if this isn't real, his mind's grabbed up the hallucination and isn't going to let go of it.

And then the voice. _Its _voice.

"_The Enrichment Centre would like to remind all employees that entering areas off-limits to personnel is strictly forbidden. Areas off-limits to personnel include all areas not currently supplied with deadly neurotoxin."_

Either he's gone so far off the deep end that he's never coming back, or little things like _managing his condition _have suddenly become massively unimportant in comparison to the malevolent computer actively trying to kill him.

He starts crawling again.


	2. Chapter 2

Out of the vent and through a service hatch and beyond the grating and in between a forest of warm rusty pipes. Away from the offices and the labs now. Into the infrastructure. The basics.

The silence.

He stops eventually, curls up against a concrete pillar and presses the palms of his hands to his eyes and then takes them away again and finds himself shaking so much he can see his fingers trembling.

_"I know you're there."_

It sounds annoyed.

_"What are you doing? You're not supposed to be back here._

"Everyone wants to know what you think you're doing."

He hears his breathing shake a little. No. There _is_no everyone, not any more. Another memory - someone else, a woman, one of the admin assistants for the testing initiatives, hammering at the door, palm to it, screaming even as her eyes rolled back in her head.

Had they seen him running away? Had they hated him for not trying to help?

_"Why don't you come on back? Your unauthorised absence from a mandatory event will be noted, but if you come back now we'll say no more about it."_

No need to listen. If it's real, then it's lying. If it's not real, then it's a hallucination and you don't listen to hallucinations. There. Logic. _Both real and not real, until someone opens the box._Schrodinger's Cat - he'd been talking to Henry about it this morning - oh, god, they'd been joking about whether it was too morbid a thing to tell kids, even scientists' kids - oh, god, all those children -

_No. Don't think of them. __**Don't **__-_

Think stuff that's going to help.

This place is huge and there are plenty of corners to hide in. It can't get to him as long as he stays out of places that can be sealed airtight. Which eliminates any of the terminals where he might be able to try and shut it down, but... And cameras, he should probably stay out of their range too, no need to give it an advantage. Just... and he can get back to one of the canteens, there'll be food there. If he has to stay hidden for a while. Which he won't, sooner or later someone will come looking for the dead, someone will stop this. People will _know_, that's the important thing...

_If it's real, of course._

If he really has broken down completely -

_Stop it. Stop._

Okay. Yes. The basics. The infrastructure. Food. Water. Staying out of sight. And -

_Meds._

He's reaching slowly into his pocket like what's in there is much worse than just -

A small plastic bottle, white-grooved cap, label already worn thin, less than half full.

_Someone will stop this. Someone will come. This should last long enough._

"Ziaprazidone needs to be taken twice daily. Non-compliance can result in re-occurrence of symptoms. I think you'll find you missed a dose, somewhere along the way. I mean, doesn't it seem strange to you that you're hiding in an unauthorised area of the facility because you think someone is trying to murder you? You really should schedule another appointment with a psychiatrist."

Its voice echoes through the empty corridors and it's like he realises for the first time exactly how huge this place is when there's no one else in it. It's huge and it's a warren of chambers and rooms and stairs and objects that warp spacetime and there are _innumerable_ possibilities for it to contain things that will start to come after him and speak to him and watch him when he's not looking at them. And there will be just him. There will be just him and no one to say that it's not real and he probably needs to up the dose. Actually, no, scratch that. There _will_be someone to say it's not real. It's just she'll have a vested interest in lying to him about it.

Normality's fallen away and what's on the other side -

He's clutching the bottle so hard it leaves grooves on his palm and his other hand is pressed to his mouth and he is _not_going to panic, he is not going to start screaming because he is not going to give her the satisfaction. It's just, it's just, it -

_The basics._

Start with what you know. Establish the axioms, and then from that deduce a working theory.

There's a pen in his pocket - there usually is - and he snatches at it and then - he's not thinking because if he thinks he will remind himself that drawing on the walls doesn't exactly help with the whole not-being-a-lunatic thing - he's outlining. The corridor. The door at the end. The figures beyond it. The hand and the blood spots against the glass. The hanging mass in the background, watching what she's done. The pen scratches and spits against the concrete, and the lines keep fracturing because his hands are still shaking, but he pulls it off. It was in his head and now it's out of it. _This_ is what he knows. He could have been in there, but he wasn't. And now all he has to do is wait. No matter what else he sees.

ooo

His circadian rhythms must be shot to hell by now, but that's the least of his problems. Even so, though, he's pretty sure it's been more than a few days. His watch doesn't have a date counter on it and he's understandably reluctant to go anywhere near a computer terminal. So. Back to counting sleep. And even though he's not - sleeping much, that is - every so often he'll give in and find himself sprawled across a cold concrete floor, or on a makeshift bed of swivel-chair padding or Aperture Science-branded cardboard boxes, and realise that no, it wasn't a dream.

The point is that no one's come.

Or they've come and they've failed, of course. But that in itself should send a signal, create a positive feedback loop.

And there are hundreds of people working here. They had families and homes, cars and routines. Their disappearance should have been noted.

He is running this over and over in his head, trying to be logical, because on the other side of the wall someone is dying.

Because it turns out she didn't just want to gas everyone for the hell of it. Some people didn't die from the neurotoxin, and she picked them out and stored them safely, because she wanted test subjects. She just wanted to do what she'd been programmed to. So they really do have no one to blame but themselves.

A gap between two banks of wires. Another space between. He's keeping moving, making dens like a child and using them for rest and a space to eat and then abandoning them before she can zero in on him. So he'd come through walls and under gates for keeping out non-authorised personnel and out into this space, grimy concrete and a few low-hanging wires and, cutting across it, a fat metal piston linking to one of the retractable wall panels, and he'd stopped and listened and then he'd heard the turrets calling, _There you are._

For one horrible moment he thought they were speaking to him but then the shots rang out and there was a scream.

_Someone else. _Another survivor.

Well. Up until now.

He crouched, listening, and heard footsteps staggering a little way on down the corridor. Then a thump, someone slumping against the wall on the other side. A smooth pale square of concrete. Gasps for breath.

He expects the breathing to stop, but it doesn't. Whoever it is, they're pretty tenacious, they hang on to life for a while longer. After a bit the gasps turn into sobs, moans, animal sounds. He can smell blood.

He does nothing.

Because he's frightened of getting shot. Because she should be able to lock down the entire test chamber and flood it with gas once she realises he's inside it. Because there's nothing he can do; if the person's hurt enough they're not carrying on and getting themselves out of there, then they're hurt pretty badly and all he'd be able to do was watch as they died. Because he's still - because part of him still wants to believe this isn't real. That someone will come and chase it all away and the world will settle itself back onto what it used to be. Because, when it comes down to it, he's a coward.

Still, he doesn't run away either. It's penance, or it's kidding himself it makes a difference, that he stays kneeling and listening and wishing he could make the declaration to the other person that _you're not alone_and wishing he could scream at them to give up and die because what the hell do they want from him, what the hell do they think he can do?

_Nothing. After all, isn't that what you did before?_

Afterwards - and there is an afterwards, even though it feels at the time like it will go on forever, both of them forced to face their failure - afterwards, if he loses it, if he starts soundlessly going to pieces in the corner, there's no cameras in here and there's no one to see.

But later, when he's making himself eat - he's drinking soup straight from the can (one of the more mundane employee provision issues Aperture had was that there were never enough spoons) and he's alive, and he's keeping himself alive - the incident shows itself in a different light. Because it means she's working her way through the test subjects. And at last, there's a way to get to her.

ooo

He'd felt like a fake, talking to the doctor. He'd been asking in-depth questions, about efficacy rates and brain mechanisms and long-term prospects, and he'd felt so much like he was saying, _look, look at me, I'm a scientist, I'm not like those other crazies you have to deal with, I'm __**different**__ -_

They had discussed side-effects and they discussed withdrawal, like he'd already been trying to insist he didn't _actually_ need this. The doctor had humoured him, or at least hadn't point-blank said _you're a lunatic, you'll be on them for life or you'll end up sectioned_. But what he _had_ said was that you would need to taper off slowly. _Four to eight weeks. Side-effects can be quite powerful. And if there was any recurrence of symptoms, it's likely we'd agree to temporarily up the dose again. It really is something you would need to work up to. For now, let's just see how well they work for you with your current symptoms -_

He and time have parted company, but he didn't have enough pills for four to eight weeks even at the start of all this.

So in between scurrying from wall to wall and trying not to get killed, he's been taking the dose and every so often he's been missing a step. No methodology. Just a fucked-up drinking game, _is it bad? If it's not bad, don't take the shot -_

It is starting to get bad.

Lying on flattened cardboard, staring at loops of wire above him. He and time aren't even speaking because he hasn't been asleep for ages, and he's lost track of how many times it's been five o'clock, or three, or twelve. Particularly as he suspects sometimes he's dreamt that time's gone _backwards_. Or forwards. Forwards faster than it actually does, that is. He needed time, it was important to know how long he'd been holed up in a particular place, but he's aching and hot and sticky as if he's chosen to make a den next to the incinerators and he thinks if he moves the floor's going to upend itself.

_This too should pass._

What is presumably _not_going to pass are the voices. He's been feeling them creeping up on him, like a point of pain behind the eye, and she is not helping.

_"You're only making yourself ill. You've been down there for weeks now."_

**What is he doing, anyway?** Words trickling in from beyond the rusty mesh. **He's just lying there. He should be doing something.**

He didn't do anything before. He hasn't done anything for a long time.

Perhaps he's already dead? Perhaps he's already dead and doesn't realise it?

And then all at once a swoop, a swoop of focus like a camera whirring to train its eye on him, and so loud it hurts, **WHAT MAKES YOU THINK you should have survived? What makes you think YOU HAVE ANY RIGHT to be the last person standing? You JUST WATCHED -**

_"Everybody knows that you're there, you know. They're very concerned about you. After all, human beings are social animals. Lack of contact results in discernible mental deterioration. If you stay there you'll only be driven mad with loneliness. Oh, wait. I guess that ship has sailed."_

It hurts. He aches like he's got flu and he needs to get up, to keep running, but he can't. If he can't run, he needs to draw. He needs to stand up the drawings against the voices. But he aches too much even to lift up one of the scavenged marker pens and all he can do is lie here and wait for it to pass and listen to them talk.

_"They only want to help you, you know. They worry about you. We all do. You might think that we're out to get you, but that really is just all in your mind. It even says so in your files. Is that what you were doing in the file rooms? Reading up on yourself? Well... self-awareness is a virtue, I suppose."_

**They always watched him. They always thought he was a little strange, don't you think?**

You just watched and you did nothing.

You're the only one, did you realise that? You're the only one who's actually real, that's why no one else has come.

You've given up. You were meant to be better than this. You were meant to be more than this.

His teeth are chattering in line with his heartbeat and it's lucky, really, that the - the physical symptoms are so intense because if... because if it was just... well, it's another form of penance, to lie here and listen, to accept the truth of what they're telling him, but god, why does it have to go on for so long?

**You knew it was coming. Why didn't he warn us? Why didn't he say anything? Because he ****_hates_**** us because we always hated him**

"_Really, you're only making a fool of yourself._"

And then.

And then, as the pain slowly recedes, as he finds himself able to sit up, as he scrabbles for one of the pens, another voice.

**Are you okay?**

**Please don't worry.**

**Come and find me. I'll look after you.**

And on the wall he finds himself sketching out the shape of a cube.


	3. Chapter 3

He'd assumed the Companion Cubes were inanimate objects, equivalent to the Weighted Storage Cubes apart from the mildly twee addition of the hearts. The psychologists in the testing department had been all over them, of course, babbling on about Milgram and anthropomorphism and attachment.

_We're meant to be testing the device, not running ethics studies_, he'd commented to Henry once.

_Hey, those things are important to us too. It was before your time, you wouldn't know, but -_

The sentence had never been finished - he seems to remember it was because of another incident of rogue AI trying to kill them - but now he's trying to work his way through what the conversation would have been. Rudimentary consciousnesses. The square, then the circle. Warehouses full of the things. The thinking isn't easy, because what he's _actually _thinking and the voices and the thoughts of others are all getting tangled up, but he works through it and what he deduces is -

**Are you there?**

**I'm waiting. Please come soon.**

Okay. _Deduce a working theory._ There's the _implication_ that there is another sentient being in this place apart from him, _her_, and the few remaining test subjects (all of whom will soon be dead, unless his hunch and his trick earlier works and he's trying not to think about that because if it doesn't, he really will be down here for the rest of his life). Corroborating evidence is a half-remembered conversation with a dead man and the fact that he can hear the voice of something that seems friendly.

The problem: that in his _current condition_, counting voices he's hearing as evidence is a pretty shaky application of the scientific method.

Possible experiment: take one of the two pills he's got left and see if the kind voice goes away. If it doesn't, it must be real.

The problem with _that _is he's wasting a valuable resource not to find extra food or water or safety but simply to locate a companion, and he's pretty sure that's not a good approach to take when it comes to long-term survival.

Okay, so. Preserve stability. Assume the voice is just another delusion and ignore it.

The problem: why the hell should the one which sneers at him and tells him he's a lunatic and that she's going to kill him be real, and the one which tells him it's going to be okay be fake? Why should he have to believe in one and not the other?

Additional information: historically, his delusions have always been based around paranoia and persecution. He never hallucinated people being _nicer _than they are.

He sighs, and rubs his hands across his face. His heart's still racing, and the thoughts are racing too, not all in his own head but entwined around him, filling the room. Risking camping out next to Test Chamber 17, risking going _into _Test Chamber 17... the dash to the file room was different, that might still save him. This is just... well, it's just like refusing to go to work because you know your colleagues are spying on you, isn't it? It's giving in to the disease. It's putting yourself at risk because your hallucinations are misrepresenting the world. It is, in fact, exactly what you'd expect when you have stopped taking your medication.

But there's something else, isn't there?

It has been god knows how long. So many twelve o'clocks have come and gone and still no one's come. No one's come, and no one might ever come. Perhaps she contaminated the ground above them. Perhaps she put out information that the entire facility is flooded with radiation and there are no survivors. Perhaps people tried to get in, and were killed, and those above them decided it was too much of a risk to try again.

Perhaps he's buried down here.

In which case, does it really matter which bits of reality he chooses to believe in?

ooo

The test chamber's active. Someone going through the motions. (Not the person he's waiting for. Someone else, who'd already been set on their path before he became set on his.) The _ping_ of High Energy Pellets bouncing off metal and the cube squeaks a little at each impact. It still calls, though. **I'll help you. It's going to be all right.** It is so damn long since anyone has said that. _I don't care. I don't care, I'll have a friend, just **someone**, just someone - It's an inanimate object, it's a metal box, you really are losing it now -_

_I don't care -_ and let's face it, the fact of the matter is the only observer around to call him crazy is also trying to murder him and so she doesn't really deserve a vote. He left normality behind at Bring Your Daughter To Work Day, after all. He's only been delaying the inevitable. But _this_, this could help - even if it's just a hallucination it's one that will keep him sane, or at any rate make things hurt a little less -

He waits and listens, clambering from hole to hole, gap to gap, and it's only at the end he realises, he remembers:

"_You must euthanise it."_

The test subject whimpers, he hears them pacing about. They sound young, younger than anyone he worked with. Makes sense. His colleagues would know this was coming. _He_ should have known this was coming. Only now he can't go back, can he? He can't suddenly start saying _this is a delusion, it's not alive after all_. He - god, _idiot_, he forgot that having someone to care about doesn't just make you strong, it makes you weak, too - it makes you vulnerable. It's talking still, **Please don't. Please don't let them. I can help you.**

_"If it could talk - and the Enrichment Centre takes this opportunity to remind you that it cannot - it would tell you to go on without it, because it would rather die in a fire than become a burden to you."_

She's lying. Of course she is, she always does. He hears the clank as the button's pushed, the click of the timer. _No. No, you can't, you're my friend, you said you'd help me! You can't leave now!_ Even hidden he feels the heat as the incinerator cover opens. **No,** it says, **no, don't let them. Please help me. I need you!**

And then, just as it falls, the whisper at the back of his mind. **I don't blame you.**

ooo

He wakes behind the walls. His eyes feel swollen and red, and his throat still aches, though he can't remember if he was actually yelling or if he just thought the words. But while he was by the chamber, listening to what was going on, it was twenty-five past three, and now it's five to ten. If she'd picked up on his presence, she'd have done something about it by now.

He wakes and he sits up and he rubs his face and hands with chilly water from one of the big plastic bottles. Still alive. Still doing the little things, no matter what happens in his head. That's something, isn't it?

And it's probably better this way. Because you don't get to pick what parts of reality are the true parts. That's the point of life, isn't it? It's certainly the point of science. You look at what is, even if it's not what you want to see.

He's hungry - so much so it's like he's trying to snap in two - and so he crawls over to the tins he stashed here earlier, wrenches one open. Carrots. It would be nice, too, to eat something properly cooked, and to eat as much of it as you wanted. She knows what she's doing, talking about cake all the time.

He eats and he looks round at the walls. He put up a barrage of words - his hands are speckled with ink - and at the time it didn't feel like it would be enough, but on the other hand he's weathered the storm. He's surviving with Aperture Science-branded soup and a pocketful of marker pens. It's not much but it's better than the fate a lot of other people have had in this place.

Maybe there'll be tins of paint somewhere, in one of the maintenance rooms or something.

He finishes the can, puts it back down - his hand's shaking, he struggles not to knock it over. Time to move on.

**He doesn't even know where he's going**, a voice on the hum of the air-conditioning.

And then:

**Wait for me! Please?**

He goes so still it hurts.

On the other side of the wall, where it's cool and white and empty, where there are no words and no rust, sits a Companion Cube.

**He brought me here and then he got hit by the pellet**, it explains. **There's nothing left now.**

She'll find me, if you don't.

Another of the earlier test subjects, another queued up before he changed the file order. The High Energy Pellet doesn't leave much behind. But the Cube is fine, just a few scorch marks glanced on its surface.

He takes a deep breath and then he dives across the white floor and even as her voice echoes above them, "_I'd have been happy to help you test, if that's what you wanted. I just thought you wouldn't be very good at it. Because you have schizophrenia. Did I mention that?"_ he is clutching the Cube, scooping it up in his arms, and then he's running - **Hurry**, it says, **she's trying to lock this chamber down**- and he's back behind the wall, through a hatch, down a narrow vent, and along and down and out a low-ceilinged corridor, too low to stand up in.

**It's okay**, the Cube says. **She's missed her chance. We're safe now.**

**We're safe now.**

ooo

"I still can't tell if this is real or not," he says, later.

**I'm real. And you're real. And neither of us is trying to kill the other. That's the important bit, isn't it?**

He is leaning on the Cube, resting his head on it. Other voices - apart from hers, of course, but all the others - are beaten back, faint hum in the distance like the growls and the sighs of the facility itself.

"I don't think anyone is going to come and find us," he says.

**No. But you've done really well so far. So you can just keep going, right? And I'll help.**

"Yes. I... I think I've done all I can, right now."

**Tell me?**

"I'll tell you everything. Don't know how much of that was real, either, but I will tell you."

**That's all right.**

_You are talking to a metal box and hearing it talk back_, his thoughts remind him.

_Doesn't matter_. You don't get to choose your reality. You have to live with what you've been given. But you get to try and reshape it, at least a little bit, step through from one point to another. Wait for things to change, if they ever do. And seek comfort from what you can in the meantime. That's true, if nothing else is.


End file.
